Neville A. Cross

Contact Data

IRC: yn1v (usually #fedora-latam and #fedora-ni at freenode when time allows it)

Fedora Account: yn1v

Mini Bio

I am Admnistrative Manager at Hotel Mansion Teodolinda at Managua city, capital of Nicaragua. I have a business degree, so I am not a deep knowledgeable computer person. I am a Amateur Radio since 1993, and a enthusiast on packet radio. By now I have a license of the highest level.

My very first attempts with linux were with Red Hat around 1999, I had several hardware problems and leave it for some years. I took a book of FC4 bible in 2006 and have been using Fedora as my main OS ever since.

I have joined the local Fedora community called Fedora-ni on march 2008. By the same time I have joined the local LUG: GUL-NIC (Grupo de usuarios Linux de Nicaragua).

There is no much Linux formal training opportunities at Nicaragua, so I took a short course in Linux Server Administration based on openSUSE (May - June 2008). This helped me a lot to fill in where my empiric learning have left voids.

I applied to become Fedora ambassador on August 20th, 2008.

February 2008 marked the beginning of a difficult situation. As the Fedora Nicaragua web site frozen on time, it was needed another local news space. Fedora Nicaragua came to life with a mailing list and the promise of a local repo.

Luckily there was a Linux course based on Fedora on March 2009. This really help me get a hang of terminal.

Since April 2009 I have been running administrative task on FreeMedia Program.

There are moments when everything happened at the same time. June 2009 was this kind of time. There was a successful Fedora 11 Launch Event in Managua. I made presence in the First Central American Free Software Encounter representing Fedora Community. Finnaly I was invited to FISL and Fudcon LATAM.

Projects as an Ambassador

Promote a monthly gathering where users that get Fedora installed from different install parties can get support. Working with local FOSS community we have established Pizza-Bash events. This are an informal activity where people can get help face to face. I have been hanging Fedora posters and helping Fedora users.

Set up a local repository at Nicaragua. In the mean time set up a private repository for updates a give access to users that do not have internet and also to be used at install parties without internet access. A local ISP has shown interest in this project, they are allocating server space for this. Update(19 feb 2009) the server is on. Most files are stored, rsync is completing them. Test looks fine so far.(9 Apr 2009) The Nicaraguan repo is working, more info here (Spanish)